Opheliac: Senior Dance Concert 09

I suppose my first blog should first explain my Senior Project since that will more than liking come up again and again in future posts.  As a Dance and Theatre Major at Cedar Crest College, I am required to do a Senior Project in order to graduate.  Since I plan on being a choreographer and owning my own dance and performing arts center one day, I decided that my project would be to plan, choreograph, and design my own dance concert.  To help tie in my Theatre background, I decided that my piece would be about Ophelia's character from Shakespeare's Hamlet.  

The piece is titled "Opheliac" and is a re-telling and personal interpretation of Ophelia's story line from the play.  My cast includes 5 ensemble dancers and one soloist.  All the dancers will be portraying Ophelia in some way.  The ensemble represent Ophelia's thoughts and the soloist represents Ophelia as a whole.

The production opens with Movement One: "Something to do, something to love, something to hope for."  The song playing is "All I Want" by Ahn Trio.  This first movement shows Ophelia as happy and in love.  The dancers each have a bouquet of flowers that they dance with.  If you remember from the play, Ophelia often has and talks about flowers, especially in her madness.  So I have used flowers as a source of symbolism in the production.  The next song is "Camera Obscura" from the A Girl with a Pearl Earring soundtrack.  This is done by the soloist and shows her concern for her future w/ Hamlet and how even though she loves him, she doubts that they will be able to be together.  

Movement Two: "Rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts." is the next segment of the dance.  The instrumental piece of music playing here is "Bess and Raeleigh Dance" by Craig Armstrong.  Over the instrumental I have recorded text from Hamlet.  The text is the scene where Ophelia attempts to give back Hamlet's letters and he says he never loved her, leaving her alone and confused.  I am using this conversation as the seed for Ophelia's madness.  The next section to this movement is Ophelia's monologue which happens right after this scene.  At the end of this section, the dancers drop their bouquets, signifying that all is lost.  

Movement Three: "Love that is not madness is not love." is about Ophelia's madness.  This is where the ensemble really comes into play.  They run around her, pulling at her, lifting her and driving her insane.  The music playing in this section is "Future Markets" from the There Will Be Blood soundtrack and "Southern Hospitality" by Clint Mansell.  The ensemble enters in this section w/ black roses to signify death.  The soloist is the only one w/o one until the very end when one of the ensemble members offers her the rose kind of saying, "Go kill yourself."

In Movement Four: "Her Fair Judgement." there is another instrumental piece called "Anne's Secret Marriage" from The Other Boelyn Girl soundtrack.  There is more recorded text that are supposed to represent the thoughts in her head.  Many of the pieces of text repeat such as "I was the more deceived"  "I loved you not" "Be wary then, best safety loves you not."  etc.  This section is entirely in black, the dancers enter w/ candles and walking about the stage.  A light comes up center stage and the soloist is there.  The next song in this movement is "Lacrymosa" by The Vitamin String Quartet.  This I am using as the suicide song.  

In Movement Five: "Ophelia's Afterlife" I take on my view on what I think Ophelia's afterlife would be like.  She knows the only way to be happy is to kill herself.  The opening of this section is the dancers, dead, laying on the floor.  Rain is heard and flower petals fall from the ceiling.  It wakes them up and they have a very upbeat, happy dance to "Every Time it Rains" by Charlotte Martin.  At the end, the dancers return to their positions laying on the floor all except the soloist, who looks out to the audience w/ a smile on her face as the lights fade to black.

"Opheliac" is a very detailed production of which I have already ran into a few problems with this semester.  My soloist is in FL this semester so I will not be able to work w/ her until January and our show opens April 4th.  So this semester I have focused only on the ensemble and their choreography so that next semester I can focus on just the soloist.  

This year's Senior Dance Concert includes three senior dance majors and will only be about a hour long.  I urge anyone who is in the Allentown area to come check it out at Cedar Crest College on April 4th.  I'm sure I will have many most posts about the process and until my next entry and leave you with this quote...

"And the poet says that by the starlight you come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked.  And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils, white Ophelia floating, like a great lily." -Arthur Rimbaud.